I keed. Vote. It's important. Ralph De La Cruz has an inspirational column about it in the Sun-Sentinel today, but for some reason it's not on the newspaper's web site. So if you don't have the paper, you'll just have to take my word for it.
But there's more than just voting happening today -- there's the stuff that politicians do after we idiotically elect them (or after someone we idiotically elect appoints them). Let's start with Dorsey Miller. He's a former North Broward Hospital District commissioner who steered millions in contracts to a Miami company called American Medical Depot that was paying him a hefty "consulting" fee every month. The State Attorney's Office started investigating the Jeb Bush appointee a couple years ago, but prosecutor John Hanlon closed it down, saying there wasn't enough there to prosecute. When I asked Hanlon, who is now at BSO, about it he actually quoted then-NBHD general counsel Bill Scherer on why Miller hadn't broken the law.
I couldn't believe my ears. Anyway, I got my own inside sources at the district and began pulling district records that showed Miller
clearly used his position to help AMD get district contracts. Combined with what I culled from Hanlon's investigation, I put out a whomp-ass investigative story in June 2004 called "The Minority Report."
Hanlon had no choice but to reopen the investigation. Jeb Bush, as a result of the Minority Report, didn't reappoint Miller (in fact, Bush overhauled the entire district; tossing overboard several other commissioners, Scherer, and inane former NBHD CEO Wil Trower). Now, two years later, it's going to a grand jury, Buddy Nevins reports today in the Sentinel.
So we could be looking at public corruption case No. 2 if the grand jury does its job.
Oh, and the first corruption case, that of ousted Hollywood Commissioner Keith Wasserstrom, is taking a troubling turn, according to Amy Sherman and Todd Wright in today's Miami Herald. They report that a Secret Service agent who examined Wasserstrom's law firm computer determined that it had likely been "wiped" clean of information. Wasserstrom's attorney says it just crashed -- sadly killing all the incriminating records regarding his relationship with Schwing Bioset. Combined with Mara Giulianti's missing e-mails, there's three words that keep coming to mind: Obstruction Of Justice.